Rants and reasonings from a compassionate asshole.

Tag Archives: Humans and Animals

I recently finished reading Mark Hawthorne’s book, Striking at the Roots: A Practical Gide to Animal Activism. In the last chapter, he talks a lot about guilt, and how animal rights activists generally carry around a lot of it: they often feel like they’re not doing enough for animals, they feel guilty if they take time away from activism, they feel guilty if they say the wrong thing or don’t say enough….the list goes on.

I can relate to this, mainly because the suffering of animals is never far from my mind. If it’s a bitterly cold day outside, I think of the animals on slaughterhouse trucks and feel guilty that I don’t mention them when someone complains about the temperature outside. When I’m menstruating, a cycle that is always accompanied by tender breasts and painful uterine cramps for me, I think of the mother cows, their lactating and swollen udders attached to mechanical milk machines multiple times a day, and I feel guilty for giving in to any of my own pain. Perhaps some of it is not so much guilt as it is an awareness: now that I know what animals endure day after day, it changes the context for how I process my own suffering. Continue reading →

One form of animal use I find particularly repugnant are charity fundraisers that serve or cook animals “for a good cause”. Not only does it use the tired rationale employed by humans to justify the way we treat certain animals – treatment that should not be questioned if it furthers a human agenda or desire – but serving someone’s suffering to raise money to alleviate another’s is about as senseless as it gets.

We see fundraisers like this all of the time: from annual BBQ’s to bake sales to black tie events that cost hundreds of dollars a plate. Organizations from hospitals to private corporations use food as a way to raise funding for charity. I mean, we all have to eat, right? Sure. But we don’t have to eat suffering, particularly when the focus of a fundraiser is to raise money to end it. Continue reading →

There’s an old song by Melissa Etheridge called, I Could Have Been You. The lyrics to the chorus are this:

I could have been youYou could have been meOne small change that shapes your destinyIf you want the proofCut me and you’ll seeI could have been youYou could have been me

From the first time I heard this song in 1995, those lyrics have stayed with me, often coming to mind when I read or witness any form of injustice or abuse, whether inflicted upon humans or animals. Needless to say, I carry a lot of white guilt too. And while I had no more control over the colour of my skin or the country and circumstance to which I was born into any more than anybody else did, I frequently wonder why I got to have it so good compared to so many others. Continue reading →

Back in the 1990’s Ellen DeGeneres released a comedy CD called, “Taste This.” In one bit called, Licking a Frog, she describes the bizarre human discovery that licking (certain) frogs can actually give humans a bit of a high. In it she asks: “How desperate are we to get high that that was a fad going around, that if you licked a frog, you could get high? And how many animals did we go through to find that out: ‘Here! Lick the anus of a mongoose, see what happens! Yes, I was wrong about the raccoon but this…’” Classic comedy.

There are countless human discoveries and inventions that are worthy of admiration, from the discovery of penicillin to the invention of electricity. Just being able to sit here and type on a computer that has a better brain than me is the result of someone’s remarkable achievement. It is a testament to both humanity’s strength and weakness that we are always looking for ways to move forward, even though advancement isn’t always the same as improvement. Continue reading →